Shelby Thornhill, Blog Post #3

A few weeks ago, each of us listened to Ms. Noorjahan Akbar passionately speak about her drive to secure gender equality between men and women. One of the points she focused on was the striking dichotomy between those who believe it is the victim’s fault for being raped or rather, the rapist’s fault. A CNN opinion article, written by John D. Sutter, dissects how most people view the rape culture in our country today versus how the issue should be taken care of.

Sutter argues that the real issue lies not in a woman’s behavior to her rapist, but rather the rapist’s behavior towards his victim. Instead of arming a woman and preparing her to use a weapon as self defense, Sutter writes, “To stop the violence, men have to stop raping and battering. That seems like common sense. But it’s still controversial.” How?! How can that be controversial at all?! To stop rape, we need to dive straight into the problem and attack it at it’s roots, not offshoots or consequential actions. This problem is not one of proper self-defense training or a gun issue; this is a societal issue at the very core. Fix the mindsets and outlooks from rapists, and voila, the number of victims is sure to drop. The less men (and women) that think it’s okay to commit such a horrendous crime, the less we will hear victims mutter “that should never have happened” with shattered voices and torn lives.

Keep in mind, blanket statements stereotyping all men as having this “rape desire” or even stereotyping that only MEN are the only gender who rapes will accomplish nothing. Whatever the upcoming actions of our country may be, hopefully we’ll soon see a stronger focus on the societal level and less of an issue about gun control or self defense.